Well you should tell someone about your friends doing drugs. It may seem hard but when your not telling your realy hurting them more. If you tell than they may be punished but they will also be treated for their problem and then be better. Even though it is its part of your fault that they are still using them. Stop complaining and take action. talk to your friends and if they dont listen you have no choice but to tell.

Well, I don't know what's going on with education in Texas, but I know that California's educational system is poorly funded. In most of my public school experience, my textbooks were almost always about 15 or even over 20 years old. We had a complete lack of air conditioning, and sometimes even heating in the classrooms.
Redistribution of wealth to poorer districts? I WISH! In the wealthier school districts of California, students have two brand new textbooks for every subject: one for home, and another for school, so that they don't hurt their precious little spines. On the other hand, districts such as the LA Unified have schools in which there is no air conditioning, no heating, and even water leaking into the classrooms during storms!
But it doesn't matter how much money the state SAYS it is pumping into education; what matters is how much is actually going to students, instead of inflating the salaries of administrators or putting new air conditioning systems in their offices, or mindless standardized testing.

I'm curious as to what you think about prohibitions against drugs for minors. Do you think that even children should be able to possess drugs??

First of all, the government has no authority whatsoever in regulating education and therefore, prohibiting illegal drugs.

I had a drug problem and actually turned to one of those "religion meditation" programs to get me off it ...

...but more laws, more "anti-drug" programs and more stupid regulations will not curb our drug problem.

Politicians and many law enforcement officials don't give a rat's a$$ about someone's body - the more illegal something is, the more profit or value it will be worth.

redjill, "underfunded education?"

44 percent of the Texas government budget goes to education - that's not underfunded in my opinion.

And our system is based on the redistribution of wealth from richer districts to poorer ones - socialist programs look good on paper, but they don't work in reality.

D.A.R.E. does more harm than good.

In fact, there have been a few lawsuits against directors of it (in different states) for actually *teaching* the kids how to smoke, how to inject, etc.

And D.A.R.E. also breeds little narcs - it's "okay" to snitch and tell the police that your brother or sister or mother or father smokes weed or injects heroin.

When will people understand that drugs aren't the problem here.

Prohibition of them is the biggest problem of all.

They're not talking about stopping DARE...they actually stopped it. The DARE program accomplished nothing but spending tons of money and some kids even said that the program was what first made them interested in drugs.

Programs like D.A.R.E. might be propaganda, but I don't think that drugs, particularly the hard core kind (heroin, cocaine, etc.) are just a little harmless recreation. New programs need to be set up to offer bored teens better forms of recreation, like art, poetry, non-religion specific meditation, extreme sports :P... but based on how clueless and underfunded the school system is these days, chances are administrators will continue to make budget cuts.
And personally I'd stop hanging out with people who want to mess up their lives like that. If they don't care about your concerns, there's not much you can do.

There is no need for DARE type propaganda programs. They do not educate people truthfully, they cause people to turn in their friends for crimes that shouldnt be crimes and they do not lower drug use, if that matters. Your friends can do as they please and so can you.

Finally someone who noticed the dare programs are drying up in our nation. I bet you people are a little curious as too why? Well here is the answer. The government and public schools had a little get together and tested the affects of the dare program and found out that it does nothing to curb illegal behavior in schools or the communities which people live in. What it did accomplish though is it educated students on how too cover up behaviors and ways to hide using drugs. That is why Dare programs are fizzling out. We are spending billions of dollars on programs that dont work. Now the government has found a way to eliminate those programs and increase there wallets and give more money to the schools for other programs so they think that they are helping our young people and themselves all in one swoop.

You think that's bad... in my english class in junior year, I saw a group of kids at one table passing around a bag of white powder. Gee, I wonder what that could be? I was tempted to narc on them, but for some reason I chickened out (I should've... those kids were a bunch of a$$holes... );( ). I heard that in another classroom a kid took out a marijuana joint and lit it in class in front of the teacher, and all he said was, "No... don't do that..." (!) All these stupid teachers who want to be everyone's friend... how pathetic. ;P